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Are cops in schools the answer?

Exclusive: Joseph Farah argues more police-state solutions will lead to gun confiscation

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

The slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., prompted National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre to urge Congress to put armed police in every school in America.

Obviously, something has to be done to stop schools from becoming shooting galleries for drugged-out zombies, gang members and madmen.

Sandy Hook may have been the tragedy that ignited national debate about cops in schools, but Democrats, liberals and left-wing activists have been advocating police-state ideas like this for decades.

Consider this: In Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago, 446 school-age children were shot in 2012. Chicago is one of those utopian dream spots completely under the control of left-wing Democrats. The city is a virtual “gun-free zone,” which means it’s very difficult for law-abiding citizens to be armed, making them easy targets for criminals, who don’t care about breaking gun laws any more than they care about obeying laws against murder.

Where’s the outrage from the media about 446 kids shot in Chicago? Where’s the outrage from Obama? Where’s the outrage from other left-wing Democrats? Where is their concern for mostly minority children and poor adults getting gunned down on a daily basis in places like Chicago where Democrats have a monopoly on power?

More than 12 years ago, on the first anniversary of the Columbine shootings, which, it must be noted, took place in another “gun-free zone” with a so-called “assault weapons” ban in place, President Bill Clinton request $60 million in federal money to expand funding of a program called “COPS in School.”

Here’s how that continuing program works today, in its own words: “The COPS in Schools (CIS) grant program is designed to help law enforcement agencies hire new, additional school resource officers (SROs) to engage in community policing in and around primary and secondary schools. CIS provides an incentive for law enforcement agencies to build collaborative partnerships with the school community and to use community policing efforts to combat school violence. The COPS in Schools program provides a maximum federal contribution of up to $125,000 per officer position for approved salary and benefit costs over the 3-year grant period, with any remaining costs to be paid with local funds. Officers paid with CIS funding must be hired on or after the grant award start date. All jurisdictions that apply must also demonstrate that they have primary law enforcement authority over the school(s) identified in their application, and also demonstrate their inability to implement this project without federal assistance.”

It’s almost comical to hear LaPierre vilified by the media and Democrats, with mockery and howls of indignation, for taking their own idea to the ultimate logical step – providing cops for all schools.

This program has been around since 1999 and has spent more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to put cops in more than 3,000 schools.

Before LaPierre announced his idea, the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org had already been circulating a petition for Congress to place cops in every school following the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook massacre.

But there are several reasons this is a bad idea:

There are many reasons for violence in schools that will be unaddressed by such an action: Most shootings in schools are acts by other children – kids who have not been inculcated with the moral values that represent the first line of defense. Instead, they are taught evolutionary theory as fact and secular humanism as a religion. They are prohibited from prayer, worship of God and the study of the Bible, which was the foundation of the first public schools in America.

Big Government police-state ideas, by necessity, always lead to gun confiscation, which leads to a loss of liberty and more violent crime, not less.

There are 100,000 public schools in the U.S., so it would cost another $5.4 billion to place one armed police officer in each one.

A better idea is to utilize existing school personnel – teachers and administrators –who can easily be trained in proper use of firearms and encouraged to carry guns.

And then we need to focus on teaching kids right from wrong again – something that worked quite effectively for more than 100 years of public schooling. Back when I was a kid, public schools had rifle clubs, and children brought their guns to school with them for training, target practice and competition. I am unaware of any school massacres that took place during that era. Isn’t that a coincidence?

Ultimately we face a very simple choice as a society: Do we return to the kind of liberty America knew when individuals were taught accountability to God? Or do we succumb to the trend of chasing God out of public life, in which case government becomes our god?

Do we protect our liberty, as we did for more than 200 years, by recognizing the importance of an armed and vigilant citizenry? Or do we yield to those who would have us trade our liberty for the promise of safety and security – a promise that will bring neither?

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